V. I. Lenin

Remarks on and Addenda to Drafts for

Rules for the Workers’ and Peasants’
		Inspection

Written:24 January, 1920First Published:First published in 1928;Published according to the manuscriptSource:Lenin’sCollected Works, 4th English Edition, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1965, Volume 30, pages 300-301Translated:George HannaTranscription/HTML Markup:David Walters & Robert CymbalaCopyleft:V. I. Lenin Internet Archive (www.marx.org) 2002. Permission is granted to copy and/or distribute this document under the terms of theGNU Free Documentation License

To Comrade Stalin. Copies to Avanesov and Tomsky,
    and also to Kiselyov, Member of the Presidium of the All-Russia
    Central Executive Committee

On the basis of directive given by the Central Committee[1]the three drafts should, in my
    opinion, be worked up into one.

I think you should add:

(1) The “Department” of the Workers’ and
    Peasants’ Inspection at the State Control Commission should
    be a temporary one for the purpose of involving the Workers’
    and Peasants’ Inspectionin alldepartments of the
    State Control Commission, and should then disappear as a special
    department.

(2) Purpose:allworking people, both men andparticularly women,should serve in the Workers’
    and Peasants’ Inspection.

(3) For this draw up lists in the localities (in accordance
    with the Constitution), excluding clerks, etc.

--all othersin turnto participate in the
    Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection.

(4) Participation to vary according to the degree of
    development of the participants—beginning with the role of
    “listener”, or witness, or learner for the illiterate
    and completely undeveloped workers and peasants, and ending with
    the granting of all rights (or almost all) to the literate and
    developed who have beentestedin some way or
    another.

(5) Pay special attention to (and make strictly precise rules
    for), andextendcontrol by the Workers’ and
    Peasants’

    Inspection over accounting for food, goods, warehouses, tools,
    materials, fuel, etc., etc. (in dining-rooms, etc.,
    especially).

Women,literallyevery woman, mustbe drawn
    into thiswork.

(6) So as not to get into a mess with the involvement of masses
    of participants they must be drawn into the work gradually, in
    turn, etc. The ways in which they participate must also be
    carefully planned (two or three at a time, rarely, in special
    cases, more, so that they will not waste the working time of the
    clerks).

(7) Detailed instructions must be compiled.

(8) Officials of the State Control Commission must (in
    accordance with a special instruction), first, invite
    representatives of the Workers’ and Peasants’
    Inspection to all their operations, and secondly, deliver lectures
    to non-party conferences of workers and peasants (popular lectures
    according to a specially approved programme on the principles of
    the State Control Commission and its methods; perhaps the lectures
    could be replaced by the reading of a pamphlet that we shall
    publish—that is, the State Control Commission, Stalin and
    Avanesov, will publish it with the special participation of the
    Party—and commenting on that pamphlet).

(9Graduallysummon peasants from the localities (they
    must be non-party peasants) to participate in the State Control
    Commission at the centre; begin with at least (if it is impossible
    to do more) one or two from each gubernia and then, depending on
    transport and other conditions,increase the number.The
    same thing for non-party workers.

(10) Gradually introduce the verification of the participation
    of working people in the State Control Commission by the Party and
    the trade unions, i.e., through these organisations verify whether
    everyone participates and what results come from the participation
    insofar as learning the business of state administration is
    concerned.

January 24, 1920

[1]This refers to the directive adopted on Lenin’s proposal by
    the Political Bureau of the CC, R.C.P.(B.) on January 23, 1920 on
    the organisation of a workers’ and peasants’
    inspection. On February 7, 1920 the All-Russia Central Executive
    Committee endorsed the Rules for the Workers’ and
    Peasants’ Inspection according to which the state control
    bodies were reorganised “into a single body of socialist
    control by workers and peasants”.

Lenin attached great importance to
    workers’ and peasants’ inspection. In the articles
    written in 1923, “How We Should Reorganise the
    Workers’ and Peasants’ Inspection” and
    “Better Fewer, but Better”, Lenin proposed to unite
    the workers’ and peasants’ inspection bodies with the
    Central Control Commission. In April 1923, the Twelfth Party
    Congress adopted a decision that followed Lenin’s proposal
    to found a joint body with Party and state control functions.

At the time of the Stalin cult Lenin’s
    principles of the organisation of Party and state control were
    grossly violated and a bureaucratic control apparatus was
    substituted for the Leninist system of control.

In November 1962 a plenary meeting of the C.C.,
    C.P.S.U. considered it necessary to reorganise the system of
    supervision on Leninist principles. It decided to set up a
    Committee of Party and State Control of the C.C., C.P.S,U. and the
    Council of Ministers of the USSR to unite and direct theentire
    work of supervision in the country.